Marvin

They can not trade the player for 1 calendar year.

Try this on for size: a non-offer sheet version of an offer-sheet compensation. Let us suppose the Sabres will offer Aho 7 yrs @ 10M AAV, which comes at 7 x 10 / 5 = 14M AAV for compensator purposes. Dundon is on record saying that he is willing to take the picks if he doesn't like the value of an Aho contract. Do you offer "immediate" help with Nylander, Mittlestadt, Cozens, and 2020 1st instead of the 4 x 1st round draft choices?

OK. I am calling you and Tondas out. Sarcasm or not, you two are being deliberately, maliciously obtuse. You both know full well that Pegula tried to win with the Rochester core. You both know that he is referring to the slow recovery from The ****ing Tank. For whatever reason, you seem to think that impugning his integrity or intelligence will assuage your feelings. Blame him all you like. But if I had heard this from my niece, I would have told my brother that I expect better from her before she enters kindergarten in the fall.

I assume @Randall Flagg has the trademark for LargeRant, or do you share them both?

Only if the Captain is signed by the trade deadline.

If last year's problems had been 100% on the roster, then neither would Vladimir Sobotka have been 4th in TOI for the forwards nor would Marco Scandella and Rasmus Ristolainen have got so much ice time. If last year's problems had been 100% on the coach, we all would have Matt Hunwick, Tage Thompson, and Vladimir Sobotka in our desired opening night line-ups for this year. I like the nuance in Flagg's posts. Yes, the roster had glaring flaws. Yes, they were often mishandled dreadfully. And both reinforced the other's problems. <joke> @Randall Flagg -- I hope the referees of the journals that you are submitting your paper to give its abstract the notices it deserves. Do you think it is good enough to get you tenure? </joke>

Dr. Who? The universe shall not, as you so crudely put it, be mine, Doctor; the Universe shall be me!

I think you are on to something. I and several of my former co-workers have met members of the family downtown every now and then when I went to get lunch. (They have the top floor of a tower near where I used to work. [The building is the one in "Bruce Almighty" where fans were throwing things off the roof after the Sabres win the Stanley Cup.]) In many ways, they are very ordinary fans who, honestly, understand hockey strategy and tactics less than everyone on this board. As such, they are probably as upset as we are at how the season transpired. As successful business people, he must know that there was no excuse for not adjusting the long-term plans to capitalise on the early season success. Because they are in a position to act on it, I imagine they expressed their displeasure to Botterill. Hell, I wonder if players, media, and maybe even Housley mentioned it to him. If so, JBot probably feels some heat from above. Let us hope, among other things, that means Tage Thompson goes to Rochester and Vladimir Sobotka goes anywhere else.

FGMTM put him in a situation where he needed to make Dominik Hasek look like Rocky Farr for most fans not to treat him like an abject failure. Although everyone's reactions were understandable, most fans were not fair to him; similarly, he's not putting the blame where it belongs.

Is Aho enough? Let's see. Forwards Skinner - Eichel - Olofsson Rodrigues - Aho - Reinhart Sheary - Mittlestadt - Nylander Girgensons - Larsson - Okposo Asplund, Smith, Criscuolo, Wilson, O'Regan, Thompson Defence Dahlin - Montour McCabe - Miller Pilut - Ristolainen Scandella - Bogosian Goaltender Hutton Ullmark Granted, someone like Donskoi will help. (Omitting Sobotka and demoting Thompson helped a lot.) But that looks like a playoff team.

For reference, that defence was very good, even if it was hardly the best in the league: Schoenfeld -- Korab Hajt -- Guevremont Carriere -- Fogolin / McIntosh That top 4 was very good and very well-rounded. Carriere never impressed me while Fogolin and McIntosh were rookies and often showed it. Did you know: When Bill Hajt retired in 1987, the list of retired players with better team-adjusted +/- ratings was Bobby Orr and Bobby Clarke. That's it. (Source: The Klein and Reif Hockey Compendium, 1987)

I think there should be a better way to graduate draftees into stronger competition that will help their development and allow the team control to slide more in the interim. Moreover, there needs to be more of a push for kids to go to college and/or learn a trade so that they can have a non-NHL future.

Rats.

I think this is perfectly obvious: 1. For whatever reason, JBot was intent on trading ROR. 2. JBot told Terry and Kim that he is trading ROR no matter what. 3. Terry and Kim said, "because the bonus is so large, try not to waste our money; please trade him before we have to pay the bonus. If we pay the bonus, we should try to keep him and work things out." 4. JBot sets his price. For some reason, "mostly futures" is not in the cards (i.e., don't take Tage Thompson; take another draft pick). He rather stupidly thinks that Berglund and Sobotka can return to form. 5. JBot makes the trade and immediately has cartons of eggs on his face. Aside: IMHO, as the owner, Terry SHOULD have final say over how his money is spent. Based on my experience with small companies (less than 100 people), owners tend to get touchy with money when they aren't making money in the business hand-over-fist and look over everybody's shoulders.

The second underline explains my answer to the first underline. My impression of PHam is that his gaslighting seems to have the tacit blessing of management because they never contradict him and tend to eventually do what the gaslighting would lead you to believe that management to do. I feel like he sets us up to be amenable to what management wants to do. JMO.

I just saw on HFBoards that LeBrun thinks that Aho really wants to stay in Carolina. His initial ask is $9.5M. https://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/teams-contacting-ahos-camp-only-interested-in-signing-with-carolina-initial-ask-is-9-5m.2661881/ Also, it looks like Carolina added Eric Haula for the equivalent of Remi Elie.

In view of the above, please tell me I am interpreting this interview wrong: https://wgr550.radio.com/media/audio-channel/06-26-paul-hamilton-howard-and-jeremy-0 1:20-3:41 1:20 - Girgensons and Larsson get QO. 1:35-50 - PHam puts Girgensons, Larsson, and Sobotka into the same bucket for value to the team and that at most 1 of them should stay. 2:48-3:03 - Q and A where PHam asserts that, unless Sobotka voluntarily leaves, that he will be on the 2019-20 roster. 3:10-25 - PHam says that "they" (the Sabres' management) don't think Sobokta is as bad as we do. 5:05 - PHam seems to assert that Tage Thompson will be on the 2019-20 roster. If I am interpreting this properly and PHam has the pulse of management, that means that we can look forward to another season with the two worst players in the league being gifted roster spots. Me with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.

It was hard to describe even back then. I definitely remember that his explanation for the drills made a lot more sense than Floyd Smith's. The practises were smoother and seemed to flow from one skill to the next very naturally. They also made a kind of thematic sense. You could tell he was a greater student of the game. I saw some interviews many years later where Al Arbour and Emile Francis said that Fred Shero was the first to really understand why the Soviets' training methods were done how they were and what results they were trying to get. He was able to take thugs like Dave Schultz, Don Saleski, Orest Kindrachuck, and Gary Dornhoefer and turn them in to useful players in that they could kill time and not get scored on with alacrity. (Unlike the Sabres' Michel Deziel, Morris Titanic, Larry Mickey, and Norm Gratton from that same season.) On Bowman, I think that he did not really know how to be a good GM until he reflected on his mistakes here.

For the preseason, I don't know why there isn't more of this in the NHL. The Sabres would have, say, 40 or so players to use, so splitting the squads to get everyone 4 games of preseason out of 6 before the last couple of games to determine final cuts and roster spots would be really useful. For instance, every year, we could have parts of the Big Club play in Cincinnati, Rochester, and State College; other games could rotate between, say, Cleveland, Erie, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, Glens Falls, Binghamton, Traxler, erm, Wilkes-Barrie, Hershey, Allentown, and Hamilton. Heck, when the options exist, make them full hockey days with the affiliates playing early and the pro teams playing later.

True Story on why I put way more importance on coaching and the GM than most: I went to a hockey camp at Holiday Twin Rinks after the 1974-5 season for the last 2 weeks. The penultimate week, Floyd Smith ran drills and such for the kids; I can't recall what other weeks he did. During the last week, Fred Shero came in; he only did a few days, if memory serves me right. After the first day with Shero, I was in tears when my parents picked me up. After I got into the car, my mom asked me what was wrong. I recall my answer clearly. "The Sabres are never going to win a Cup with Floyd Smith." I then went on to elaborate what I preferred about Shero. IMHO, although Bernie Parent vs. Gerry Desjardins was the deciding factor in that series, coaching made the Sabres permanent underdogs among the top teams. To this day, I believe that coaching was also the Sabres' ultimate problem with Montreal, Boston, Philadelphia, and the Islanders in subsequent years.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/iran-hawks-owe-americans-some-answers/592390/ Some food for thought about some of the people in the Administration. What intrigues me is that Trump campaigned in part on not getting involved, yet many of his advisors want to do nation-building as a hobby.

Nah. I imagine that's just a back-up plan in case SJ drag their feet.

Among others, my brother's friends in the NHL corporate offices, a friend in Vancouver from my days in Doctor Who fandom, a couple of hockey writers who have written books on the NHL. Remember that their stuff is predicated upon their opinions, so the information is at best second-hand when I get it. Their impression is that it is that JBot is trying as fiercely to trade Ristolainen. My brother's friend in the NHL offices kind of ruefully said that, and I quote, "JBot may have learned his lesson with O'Reilly. We Sabres fans have to hope so." That quote bothers me, and I can't quite put my finger on why.

Sadly, I think there are an awful lot of people who would agree with you.